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Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

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Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#341

Post by masonic »

georgecmu wrote: post #16

This reminded me of the Yak-42 jackscrew failure due to a design defect, which caused a crash killing 132 onboard in 1982 [1]. The entire fleet was grounded for more than two years until the full investigation was completed and the defect was fixed. Three design engineers were convicted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_8641

It made me think of the horizontal stabilizer jackscrew jam on Alaska Airlines 261[0], but I misremembered that as a 737 rather than a MD-83. SF radio personality Cynthia Oti was among the passengers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#342

Post by avar »

logifail wrote: post #338
will4274 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point being that airlines can and will fly airframes that in one way or another would be illegal to manufacture today for safety reasons Of course, this is also true for cars. The vast majority of cars on the road would be illegal to manufacture today.

> The vast majority of cars on the road would be illegal to manufacture today. Source? Illegal to manufacture due to lacking significant safety features, or due to other changes over time such as evolving emissions standards?

Both, there's lots of both safety and pollution mandates like that. As just one recent example[1]:

> "the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it would require all automobiles sold in the United States built beginning in May 2018 to include backup cameras"

That's less than a year ago. It's a fair bet that most vehicles on the road don't have such systems, but they're now illegal to manufacture.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_camera

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#343

Post by logifail »

avar wrote: post #342
logifail wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of cars on the road would be illegal to manufacture today. Source? Illegal to manufacture due to lacking significant safety features, or due to other changes over time such as evolving emissions standards?

Both, there's lots of both safety and pollution mandates like that. As just one recent example[1]: > "the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it would require all automobiles sold in the United States built beginning in May 2018 to include backup cameras" That's less than a year ago. It's a fair bet that most vehicles on the road don't have such systems, but they're now illegal to manuf…

> 'The area directly behind vehicles has been described as a "killing zone" due to the associated carnage'

Got to love Wikipedia and their strict adherence to NPOV. That kind of camera does look to be a US (and Canada?)-only requirement at the moment.

Are there (m)any internationally-recognised compulsory safety feature standards that mean a vehicle manufactured, say, five years ago would no longer to be legal to manufacture today?

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#344

Post by avar »

logifail wrote: post #343
avar wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both, there's lots of both safety and pollution mandates like that. As just one recent example[1]: > "the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that it would require all automobiles sold in the United States built beginning in May 2018 to include backup cameras" That's less than a year ago. It's a fair bet that most vehicles on the road don't have such systems, but they're now illegal to manuf…

> 'The area directly behind vehicles has been described as a "killing zone" due to the associated carnage' Got to love Wikipedia and their strict adherence to NPOV. That kind of camera does look to be a US (and Canada?)-only requirement at the moment. Are there (m)any internationally-recognised compulsory safety feature standards that mean a vehicle manufactured, say, five years ago would no longer to be legal to man…

The "killing zone" isn't something Wikipedia invented, they're quoting Consumer Reports, which isn't exactly just some guy's blog when it comes to this topic.

You seem to just be moving the goal post. No, you are not going to find some safety feature of cars that was introduced in lockstep across the entire globe overnight whose impact is as dramatic as say seat belts or airbags were.

Car safety is all about marginal improvements at this point, and there are many regulatory agencies. In practice the US and EU set the tone for safety across the globe, but they don't act in lockstep.

Most of these mandates are also going to be relatively mundane, e.g. mandating that the A-pillar in newly sold cars this year must be 5% stronger than the previous mandate, or given statistics about pedestrian impact mandating some small adjustment to the design of the front bumper or hood.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#345

Post by isostatic »

aabeshou wrote: post #65
marcinzm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing is a US military supplier and a strategic US asset in the airspace industry, the US government will ensure that they do not go under no matter how much damage they do (see car industry). Furthermore even if that wasn't the case the people who cause these issues have almost zero chance of facing personal liability. As a result, it's in the personal interest of the people running Boeing to cut corners and extrac…

This is an excess of capitalism: those with capital are given too much power, and their self interest ends up being entirely selfish at the expense of society at large. Capitalism needs regulation, and if the system ends up entrenching itself so that regulation becomes impossible (because of corruption, self-interest, short-term gains, etc), then it means the entire system of capitalism is faulty.

A big problem we found 11 years ago was that some companies were "too big to fail"

The solution isn't to stop those companies from failing, it's to prevent companies from being "too big to fail"

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#346

Post by lmm »

marcosdumay wrote: post #274
DuskStar wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somebody calculated the B783 Max odds on 4*10^-6 yesterday, what is a crazy high level. I think that may have been me (1/250000), but that was based on a couple of generous assumptions - two crashes across 4 flights/day on 350 planes for an average of 365 days. Unfortunately I think a more reasonable flights/day number is 3 or lower - a lot of Max 8s are on longer routes - and the flight day average is almost certa…

A few years ago I calculated with a friend the accident rate of several cohorts of Brazilian aviation (well, the part of aviation that operates on aerodromes, so no agriculture or sports). Our worst cohort was for private planes, private pilots, on small airports, on fast growing cities. It was just a little bit under 4*10^-6 accidents (all, not only fatal) per airport operation (that is, twice your number). I was re…

Do those people jump into cars?

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#347

Post by acqq »

smlacy wrote: post #287
Admiral_C wrote: post #256

I wrote this, not happy it got picked up and posted here without credit. Here's the original Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/adl0jk...

You'd be better served hosting this content on a traditional blogging / content platform rather than imgur, IMHO. "Picked up without credit" on a platform that provides no attribution whatsoever isn't really a hill to die on.

The problem is the copyrights: try for yourself to host under your own name all the pictures seen there. The anonymity allows one to present more content than a non-anonymous "normal" user would be able to use.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#348

Post by cdolan »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #340
cdolan wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also from Pittsburgh, and my wife lost her dad in this crash. The top comment on this thread (re: "acceptable loss"), is infuriating.

> The top comment on this thread (re: "acceptable loss"), is infuriating. Do you ever drive a car? Do you think the risk is "acceptable"? And don't get hung up on semantics, "acceptable" doesn't mean it's not terrible, it means that it's not feasible to prevent every risk with that danger:cost ratio. Especially because anything that causes a drastic reduction in flight will increase car trips and probably cause more…

Get out from behind your computer and talk to people for once.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#349

Post by cdolan »

cc439 wrote: post #313
cdolan wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also from Pittsburgh, and my wife lost her dad in this crash. The top comment on this thread (re: "acceptable loss"), is infuriating.

Reading both of your comments, one has to wonder if your wife and their classmate were one in the same.

Very Probable! @Kibwen what part of town was your friend from (not asking for a name on purpose I’m uninterested in sharing my wife’s name here, however easy it may be to google).

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#350

Post by Ma8ee »

cdolan wrote: post #348
Dylan16807 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The top comment on this thread (re: "acceptable loss"), is infuriating. Do you ever drive a car? Do you think the risk is "acceptable"? And don't get hung up on semantics, "acceptable" doesn't mean it's not terrible, it means that it's not feasible to prevent every risk with that danger:cost ratio. Especially because anything that causes a drastic reduction in flight will increase car trips and probably cause more…

Get out from behind your computer and talk to people for once.

There's always a tradeoff. We could make driving much safer by enforcing drastically lower legal speed limits, much longer mandatory training for the drivers and even higher safety standars in cars. But we have chosen not to, because that would be perceived as limiting freedom, being inconvenient and cost money. But more than thirty thousand people die in car accidents every year in the US alone.
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